Welcome to Pangnirtung

Meet Allashua, who lives in the town, and the Qallupilluit who live under the sea ice.

This is a good show to enhance a unit on the Arctic, native Canadian legends, or modern Inuit life. The live music includes an Inuit frame drum, an accordion, and some very high-tech effects. The well known Canadian book, by Robert Munsch & Michael Kusugak is a favourite with kids.

We visited Baffin Island in preparation for this show, and returned to present the finished play to school children and elders there. We were delighted with their response. This play opened at the National Arts Centre, and has toured across Canada.

The Qikiqtani Inuit Association has a website about to Inuit myths here. The page on Qallupilluk is here. (Scroll down for English.)

You can hear Robert Munsch read A Promise is a Promise. Go to his website here and click on the "Listen" button.

Allashua, a little girl of about 11, lives with her family in a modern day Arctic town. She goes with her family on a fishing trip ...out on the land...

As soon as they arrive, her parents begin to unpack, but Allashua is so impatient to go fishing that they allow her to go ahead, as long as she goes fishing in the lake, and not in the sea. She promises them that she will not go near the dangerous cracks in the sea ice.

...But Allashua does not keep her promise. She goes to the sea and fishes in one of the cracks in the ice.

Her parents have told her about the mythical Qallupilluit, female monsters who grab children who go too near the sea ice without their parents.

She does not believe in them until suddenly the Qallupilluit appear, and drag her down beneath the ice. In desperation, Allashua promises that if the Qallupilluit let her go, she will come back and bring them all her brothers and sisters. The Qallupilluit agree and let her go.

When Allashua’s parents hear what has happened, they don’t scold.

They insist that she must keep her promise, but the mother has a plan. She invites the greedy Qallupilluit to a goodbye party for her children.

While the Qallupilluit are busy at the party, Allashua takes her brothers and sister to the sea ice, but of course, the Qallupilluit are not there.

Allashua has kept her promise, and the children are safe.

Physical Requirements

We need two tables, approximately 2 feet by 6 feet, (about the size of a standard folding table); and 10 chairs (standard stacking chairs will do nicely).

Times

Time for set up: 1 hour

Length of show: 50 minutes

Question period: 10 minutes

Take down time: 45 minutes

We need use of the performance area for 2 hours and 45 minutes.

Please re-arrange any activities scheduled for that time, and have the space cleared for our arrival.

Seating Arrangement

Our set will extend 25 feet across, and is 20 feet deep. We’ll help the teachers to seat their students.

The students should sit cross-legged on the floor, in order of age. This is easiest to accomplish if the students arrive in order of age, youngest to eldest. The youngest group could arrive about 5 minutes prior to the performance time.

You can see a PDF file of our seating plan for schools here, and our public show seating here.

Chairs

Although children will be seated on the floor, we’ll set chairs along the sides to mark out their area; teachers can use these chairs to sit beside their classes. We also need three chairs backstage.

Noises

Please turn off all bells, fans, and air conditioners for the performance.

We need to back our van up to the door which gives the closest access to the performance area. Please arrange to have gates and doors unlocked, and to keep the parking space free for us. If there is no easy access to the performance area, we’d appreciate it if three or four people could help us to unload and load our equipment.

Floor Plan

A floor plan of the show, in PDF format, is available for download: click here.